Praise Participants
When you receive an InnerSource contribution, it's important to thank the contributor for their time and effort. Extending your gratiutude not only effectively acknowledges the contribution but also engenders further engagement from the contributor and others. Praising contributors' positive contributions to your InnerSource project motivates those contributors (and their managers) to continue investing in the effort.
How can we properly express our gratitude to a contributor for their contribution to an InnerSource project? We may not know precisely which words or communication channels we should use to express ourselves sincerely. But recognizing and thanking contributors is critical for keeping those contributors (and their managers) engaged in the work. Luckily, effective praise for participants follows a pattern, and following this pattern helps ensure that our messages of thanks come across clearly and graciously. It also makes us less likely to forget to praise our contributors, which is unfortunately too easy to do.
- You are the Trusted Committer or maintainer on an InnerSource project.
- You value the community of contributors and want to maintain and grow it.
- You are busy, which makes forgetting some soft touches (like praise and thanks) easier.
- You may not be someone that is comfortable in social situations or good with words.
- Peer recognition is very important to job satisfaction and career development.
Being recognized by others feels good. And in a professional setting, recognition from peers can also increase your organizational influence and career growth. Any time someone contributes to your InnerSource project, recognize them with an authentic, sincere "thank you." Be sure to highlight specific examples of ways these contributions have impacted the project positively.
For non-trivial contributions (all code contributions and significant time contributions), say "thank you" via the following mechanisms:
(1) Call out the person by name in any chat location (e.g. Slack) where you organize your project activity. Let everyone know what they did and thank them publicly.
Example:
Everyone @here give a high-five to @andrew.clegg for updating the rcs-viewer to the latest version of the hebo-client (https://github.com/rcs/rcs-viewer/pull/81). Thanks for helping keep this library up-to-date, Andy!
(2) Email them and their manager (cc'd) privately, thanking them for the contribution. For code contributions, consider forwarding the merge notification mail.
Example:
Hi, Andy, I want to thank you again for making this update. It may have been a small amount of time, but it's attention like this from each person that make the RCS project work for all of us. Thanks for solving your own problem in a way that also makes the rcs-viewer better for everyone.
Feedback like this leaves the contributor with a fantastic feeling and ready to re-engage in the project. Combining both forms of thanks gives them recognition in front of their peers (breadth) and in front of their direct manager (depth). There's a subtle encouragement for those peers in chat to consider contributing themselves and for that manager to look for appropriate circumstances to encourage their other direct reports to do the same. Additionally, awareness of the InnerSource project spreads to the manager, who may have previously not known of the team's use and involvement with it.
One caveat: keep it real. Make sure that your words stem from the sincere thanks that you feel inside for what they've done. Keep the level and verbosity of praise appropriate to their level of involvement. Overdoing it may feel insincere and mechanical and defeat your purpose in reaching out.
- Just Say Thanks (from the book Fearless Change)
- Nike (multiple projects)
- SAP - InnerSource initiatives like the Dojo and Everest projects are elevated by the 'Praise Participants' pattern, where the SAP Appreciate program plays a key role in fostering a culture of gratitude and recognition, driving innovation and collaboration to new heights. See: InnerSource: First Contribution Explored
- Structured
- Russ Rutledge
- Todd Lisonbee for encouraging to "keep it real."
- Isabel Drost-Fromm for this extra explanation of the importance of providing specific examples of how the contribution has positively impacted the project.